An astute reader has directed me to a couple of brilliant, just-released videos done by David Wasdell (produced by Envisionation) which bring into focus the rapid changes that are occurring in the Arctic and what the horrific implications are for the rest of the planet. I have watched both videos and posted an abbreviated version of them below. The original transcript of the two videos is here. We can see that even the worse case scenarios plotted by mainstream climate models have grossly underestimated what is happening in the Arctic. As Mr. Wasdell states, “The Arctic… is the fastest moving response to global warming and climate change anywhere on the planet.”

One of the reasons for the Arctic’s rapid temperature increase is that it is not being shielded by industrial pollutants that once came from the Northern Hemisphere. The aerosol effect is now coming primarily from the burning of poor quality coal in Asia(China and India). From roughly 1940 to 1980 there was a massive increase in power production during the Great Acceleration of the West. Remember the acid rain and smog from the 50’s and 60’s? In 1970, the U.S. Congress imposed acid emission regulations through the Clean Air Act which was strengthened two decades later in 1990. Sulfate and nitrate levels in precipitation decreased by some 40 percent since that time. This lifted the manmade protective aerosol shield, also called “global dimming”. Temperatures then started to rise again, but have leveled off since 1997 due to the recent industrialization of China and India, the effect of which has been to artificially cool down global temperature once more.

The effects of global dimming have been enhanced during this period [Asian Industrialization] by the mixing of more surface heat down to deeper ocean water, by the dominance of La Nina (cooler) conditions in the Pacific, and by a prolonged period of minimal solar radiation. The absence of temperature increase has also blocked all amplification from the temperature-dependent feedback mechanisms.

All of these eras(The Great Acceleration, The Clean Air Act, and Asia’s Industrialization) and their effect on global temperature are shown in the chart below:

Climate-change deniers are of course crowing and saying “Although carbon dioxide concentrations have gone on increasing, and emissions are running at a higher rate than when temperature was still rising, temperature has not changed. So obviously it is independent of carbon dioxide. So we can forget all about climate change and continue to use fossil energy without any worry about contributing to global warming!” That is a complete and utter myth!

Remember what happened after the Second World War? The same thing is happening today.

So what happens when Asia, specifically China, cleans up and improves its air quality? Global temperatures will rise again.

The Arctic Meltdown

Free from the effects of global dimming that heavy post WW II industrial activity produced in the northern hemisphere, the Arctic air is relatively clean, as compared to the rest of the world right now. The greenhouse effect from CO2 is therefore allowed to occur uninhibited at a much faster rate, setting off numerous positive feedback loops:

– floating ice and land-based ice begin to melt and more sea and land surface is exposed to the sun’s rays, inducing further ice melt from the diminishing Arctic albedo effect

– the sea heats up from the disintegration of floating ice and the land heats up from diminishing ice cover

Hyper-exponential Increase of Temperature in the Arctic Area

The worst-case prediction by current climate models of an ice-free Arctic by about 2075 are way off mark because they employ crude linear extrapolations that do not account for complex, self-reinforcing feedback loops. the Arctic will actually experience its first occurrence of zero ice area at the end of September 2015 according to Wasdell’s studies.

Through the use of submarine-based sonar measurements and satellite data, a PIOMASS graph of yearly minimum Arctic ice volume or mass has been constructed which also shows the first occurrence of no floating Arctic sea-ice in 2015.

Another graph, known on the internet as the Arctic Death Spiral, shows the collapse in the total volume of Arctic ice measured in thousands of cubic kilometers. The center of the graph is zero and the values increase up to 30km3 as you move out from the center. Each year is represented from 1979 up to 2013 in a clockwise orientation. Each month of the year has its own color and is plotted in a clockwise fashion as well. Being the month with the least amount of ice cover, September is the innermost line represented by the color black.

You can see that September ice volume plunged from 7km3 in 2009 down to 3.3km3 in 2012. Indeed all months of each successive year are pulling downwards towards the center of zero ice volume. According to these calculations of total ice volume melt, the first year of an ice-free September moves up one year earlier to September 2014.

In the 1980’s, the mass of floating Arctic sea ice at the end of September was staying roughly stable. By the 1990’s it was losing about 4.5 thousand cubic kilometres per decade. In the 2000’s that moved up to about 7.8 thousand cubic kilometres per decade, while in the last three years the decadal rate has surged to around 13.8 thousand cubic kilometres. So we have another of these behaviours in which the smaller the mass becomes, the faster the rate of loss. The behaviour is not linear, it is represented by an exponential curve…

…And then there is one other thing to take into account:

Ice does not just melt and thin gradually to a wafer as would be implied in these projections. When it reduces to about 45 centimetres thick it begins to break up under the impact of waves and tides and storms. The result is a lot of brash, smaller broken pieces of ice. Now broken ice of this nature melts very much faster because warmer water and warmer air and solar energy can get round to its exposed surfaces. The melt-rate increases dramatically. These curves that we have been exploring take no account of this final break-up.

So, while we would expect the first occurrence of zero ice by the end of September 2014, there is a distinct possibility that under the impact of ice break-up (of which interestingly we were already seeing signs in March 2013) the Arctic Ocean could be ice free at the end of September in 2013.

Consequences and Implications

– Runaway Climate Change in the Arctic: The CO2 trigger has set off multiple factors such as the water-vapour feedback, the ice-albedo feedback and other positive feedback loops to exponentially accelerate ice loss in the Arctic as shown in the above graphs.

– Increasing Ice-Free Window: As mentioned earlier, September is the month with the least amount of ice and each successive year has seen a smaller and smaller volume of ice at that time. We are approaching the year when September will be ice-free, leaving the door open for the sun’s rays to heat up the ocean and further accelerate ice loss in the Arctic. This is like a burglar getting a foothold in a door that has been cracked open, allowing him to use his crowbar to fully pry open up the door that was once safely closed. An ice-free month of September that will soon open up in 2014 or 2015 will allow the sun’s solar energy to expand that ice-free window year after year after year.

– Accelerating Temperature: The expanding ice-free window described above will accelerate average temperatures upwards year after year after year, intensifying all feedback loops.

– Tundra Impact: Warmer Arctic temperatures flow over the land, melting tundra permafrost and releasing methane as well as activating bacteria which feed on exposed dead vegetation which in turn release even more CO2 and methane. The melting Tundra takes longer to refreeze in Autumn which further decreases snow cover. Melting Tundra releases warm waters which runs off into the northern seas, warming and desalinating shallow coastal surface waters.

– Methane Release: Wave energy, tidal behaviour and storm effects from a warming and increasingly ice-free Arctic are acting to disturb ancient methane deposits at the sea floor. These methane deposits are called “clathrates”, a combination of methane and ice crystals. The warmer the water gets, the more methane is allowed to reach the water’s surface and escape into the atmosphere. Fossil ice filled with ancient plant matter and detritus is also beginning to melt and release methane. The combination of Tundra methane and deep-sea methane escaping into the atmosphere further increases the greenhouse effect, enabling methane release to speed up and create an even more potent greenhouse effect. Thus another runaway feedback process has been activated.

– Melting Greenland Ice-Cap: The melting is accelerating and releasing water into the glacial cracks and down into the base of the ice sheet, enabling the calving of glaciers and discharge of icebergs into the sea.

…So the collapse of the ice-sheet could become exponential and could happen quite quickly. As that occurs, large quantities of cold fresh water are discharged into the North Atlantic and that can have significant effects on the drivers of the Gulf Stream, the thermohaline circulation. As that slows down (and we would expect it to under these conditions) then the heat that at presently comes via ocean currents to the north- western seaboard of Europe begins to decline. In a strange anomaly, the rate of change of temperature in north-west Europe will slow down as Arctic temperatures climb.

– Sea-Level Rise: The melting of the Greenland ice-cap would have catastrophic consequences for civilization and its large percentage of coastal urban centers. Up to about seven metres of global sea-level change could happen on a decadal basis. The West Antarctic ice field is also subject to melting and disintegration, although at a much slower pace than Greenland, which would act to raise sea levels even higher.

– Jet-Stream Behaviour: The energy of the Jet Stream is driven by the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the warm sub-tropical air of lower latitudes. As the Arctic warms and the temperature difference decreases, the jet stream around the North Pole begins to slow down and get sluggish or mangled. Colder northern air is being pulled south and warmer tropical air is being sucked up north to the Arctic, further warming the Arctic. This change in the jet stream causes “blocking patterns of extreme drought, extreme rain, extreme cold, extreme heat, and extreme unpredictability.”

And that is where the nub comes. With extreme unpredictability food production is disrupted in the bread-baskets of the northern hemisphere. We are talking about the corn and wheat-producing areas of North America and Europe, of Russia and the Ukraine, and across to the wheat and rice producing areas of northern China. We have already seen major loss of food production capacity in the northern hemisphere as a result of what has already taken place. Over the next few years that will accelerate significantly. There are economic issues; there are humanitarian issues; there are political issues that all stem from that instability. We are already seeing hedge funds and pension and other investment funds buying up future food in anticipation of future shortages and high prices that all stem from this phenomenon. That means it is going to be very difficult for the poorer countries of the world to buy food on the open market to enable their populations to survive. It will be even more difficult for the Aid agencies to buy up surplus food (which is in short supply and much more expensive) for distribution in conditions of humanitarian disaster. Because of the economic spin-off there will be financial destabilization in the wake of food shortages. That leads inevitably to political destabilization. So we have some really important issues to deal with that all stem from the implications of the phenomena we are now understanding in the terms of Arctic Dynamics.

– Impact on Global Dynamics: What we see in the Arctic – runaway climate change – could be in store for the rest of the planet which, at the moment, is still in stasis. Once the “aerosol effect” or “global dimming” of industrial pollution is removed, we will see further temperature increases. Other positive feedback loops which are specific to various regions of the world could come into play like they have in the Arctic.

The implications of jet-stream behaviour and Arctic dynamics could spin-off into our economics, into our food production, into abandonment of the poor, into the inability to sustain a population of 8, 9 or even 10 billion people, into our survival as a species. All this will inevitably follow unless we are able to intervene, to slow it down, to bring it to a halt and reverse it. Without that intervention, global dynamics hold a dark future for humanity and a dark future for the biosphere of which we are a part. It is time to take action, not only for the Arctic but for the whole global crisis in which we are all involved.

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About xraymike79

I'm a social critic, political/cultural commentator and artist. The modern industrial world is on the cusp of great changes to our current unsustainable way of life. Most people are oblivious to the paradigm shift that will occur, but some are starting to awaken to the fact that the future will not resemble the halcyon days of the last half century in America as evidenced by the OWS movement. My objective is to highlight important news stories and find the truth that is hidden behind what Joe Bageant called the American Hologram.
www.collapseofindustrialcivilization.com

5-20-2013
My latest Guardian post, ‘Obama’s Arctic strategy sets off a climate time bomb‘ is about the new US National Strategy for the Arctic Region published by the White House just over a week ago. My piece analyses the strategy document in-depth, and concludes that President Obama’s new Arctic strategy, driven by narrow economic and energy interests, would accelerate the rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice, driving catastrophic climate change, and guaranteeing an uninhabitable planet before the end of the century (and probably far earlier). The implications of this strategy and its implementation, therefore, should not be underestimated.

In the BBC fictional story ‘Burn Up’ the elites -especially the American elites-deliberately prevaricate on the matter of emissions because they WANT a meltdown of the Arctic in order to make extraction of resources easier.

Really? Seems like fiction imitating fact, does it not? I’m supposing in the television version the world did not burn up and kill everyone off. I hope the elites can change that part of the story, but something tells me they haven’t thought of that ending.

I just sent this to a friend who has countered my posts to him about global warming with all the arguments for denialism. He is a smart guy. Just determined not to allow himself to believe we are killing the planet, and if we are, it is no big deal. Here are all his points he has made over the years:

1. It is actually getting colder, not warmer…….several times he has sent this.
2. Global warming will be good. Farming in the arctic, great opportunities of an ice free arctic.
3. The sun causes earth to warm up a bit, not CO2
4. The changes of late are just natural variation, not because of fossil fuels.
5. The scandal of the east Anglia climate scientists prove the whole idea of warming temperatures has been manipulated and is a hoax.
6. The earth has warmed and cooled all through the past, so it is not because of man’s activity.
7. Scientists get stuff wrong all the time. No reason to believe them.
8. Scientists are out for the grant money. They will say stuff just to get the money.
9. Even if the scientists are right, we will never stop using fossil fuels, so why worry about it?
10. It is no big deal because even if the planet really heats up and humanity is killed off, the planet will still be there and it can regenerate.
11. It will be good to have major die offs from global warming because there are too many people on earth now anyway.
12. There are always predictions of coming horrors, like Y2K and Japan taking over the world’s economy, and nuclear war, and none of it ever happens. Therefore, global warming won’t be bad.
13. Plants grow better with more CO2.
14. Peterson, our local environmental scientist, is wrong about storm water runoff, so these climate scientist are also probably wrong.
15. We are using less oil and coal, and more natural gas, so global warming will not be so bad.

I think fossil fuels have really dumbed down and weakened the fortitude of the Human species to such a degree that extinction is the only outcome.
It’s like a rich could who has grown up accustomed to having everything on a silver platter, then suddenly the trust fund disappears or gets pulled away.

From 600,000 BC until the beginning of last century, 1900, the atmospheric methane levels were between 400 and 800 ppb.

Since 1900, atmospheric concentrations of methane have risen to 1600 to 1800 ppb !

Wasdell says :

The process has sometimes been called “the methane bomb”, but I think that is a misnomer. It takes a lot of heat and energy to melt the clathrate deposits on the sea-bed. So the rate of release is determined by the rate of heat transfer from warmer surface water to the sea-bed. That is a fairly slow process. There are some possible conditions that could lead to rapid release of large amounts of methane from the sea-bed, but overall the methane release is a fairly slow cascade feedback that can take place on the scale of decades to centuries. It does, however, have enormous consequences for the rest of the world as well as the Arctic area.

But it DOES NOT NEED THE WARM SURFACE WATER TO TRANSFER DOWN TO THE DEEP SEA BED at all. All it needs is for a warm water ocean current to move. And the ocean currents are changing, because of global warming, that’s already reported. So, a warm current can shift and warm the sea bed on the continental shelf and warm the clathrates, and that IS happening.

I think Wasdell is possibly thinking of Archer’s assessment which was featured on RealClimate, which seems quite complacent to me…

“Our analysis suggests that changes in Gulf Stream flow or temperature within the past 5,000 years or so are warming the western North Atlantic margin by up to eight degrees Celsius and are now triggering the destabilization of 2.5 gigatonnes of methane hydrate (about 0.2 per cent of that required to cause the PETM). This destabilization extends along hundreds of kilometres of the margin and may continue for centuries. It is unlikely that the western North Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents10, 11, 12; our estimate of 2.5 gigatonnes of destabilizing methane hydrate may therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently destabilizing globally.”

Also the Arctic and continental shelf shallow waters where most of the methane hydrates are, could easily warm up a lot, and quickly, why not ?
what’s stopping them ?

Also, the release of methane from the Antarctic seems to be via a very different process.

Also, the methane in the permafrost and the Tibetan Plateau, that’s a significant chunk… that’s a different process, what if when, instead of frozen soil and snow cover, it pours with warm rain much of the year, which will soon go down into the ground and melt the massive amount of methane clathrates underground on the Tibetan Plateau and the rest of the N. Hemisphere permafrost… maybe ? in addition to the methane from the rotting unfrozen peat ?

Mankind’s CO2 emissions along with all our other industrial activities have set into motion a destabilizing process which is fundamentally affecting the Earth’s geologic and environmental evolution. No one knows for certain the final outcome of this planet-wide experiment. All we can do is glean information, much of which is very ominous and points to the Earth becoming uninhabitable for humans as well as most other living things within a very short time span.

Here’s what Wasdell says:

There now exists a state of Global Emergency”

Leading edge analysis of the dynamics of the whole earth system (Gaia) indicates the existence of a “hot earth” scenario beyond anything experienced in the stable containment of the current glacial/inter-glacial period.

The best historical example is provided by the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), the fifth major extinction event which occurred some 55 million years ago.

The anthropogenic disturbance of the whole earth system is of the same order as that which triggered the PETM

In addition:

The greenhouse gas spike of the PETM levelled off at about 440 parts per million. In contrast we are approaching that level on a hyper-exponential trajectory.
The rate at which the crisis is being provoked is some 30 times faster than that of the PETM, placing all adaptive systems under significantly greater stress.
The resilience of the whole earth system has been massively compromised and is being increasingly downgraded by human activity.
The potential Anthropocene Extinction Event therefore has the capacity to be significantly more severe than that associated with the PETM which wiped out some 85% of all life on earth.

The ground for that analysis is presented in “Beyond The Tipping Point: Positive Feedback and the Acceleration of Climate Change”, which is subtitled “Facing the Anthropocence Extinction Event”, and unless we can achieve the goal of Climate Stabilisation, that is exactly where we are headed.

My point is, that whilst recognising that Wasdell does an excellent presentation, he is being overly optimistic re the methane, imo.

I hadn’t noticed that statement before, but as you’ve drawn it to my attention, that’s another bit of nonsense.

“…unless we can achieve the goal of Climate Stabilisation…”

There is NO CHANCE whatsoever of us achieving any such goal. We have already achieved the goal of de-stabilising the climate.

Once the system is perturbed, how are we supposed to re-stabilise it ?

Please tell me that, anyone. It simply does not work like that. Even if, by magic, we returned CO2 levels to pre-industrial 280 ppm and methane to pre 1900 levels, the climate does NOT return to what we had before.

It’s like a ball that has been set to roll down a hill, it’s not going to roll back to where it was. We don’t know HOW to do that, and even if we did, we don’t have the MEANS to do it.

It will EVENTUALLY find a new stable state, but that will take tens of thousands of years. We’ll all be long gone.

But even if that were not so, in a practical sense, what does his statement mean ?

Nobody knows, with any precision, what levers to pull or buttons to press, on the climate system, to stabilise it. All we could do would be to stop clearing natural forests, plant trees, use biochar, end coal and oil use, etc, etc, and crash industrial civilisation. Nobody seems to want to do those things, or they are impossible to do politically, at least in the sort of time frame we have, in that they should all have been done long ago.

We might only have 5 years, before climate chaos and social chaos prevent any sort of orderly action. Perhaps less. Perhaps more. The dreamers assume more, that we can ‘transition’ to a post crisis future where we have stabilised the climate. Imo, they are totally deluded. But let them try.

The climate we have now was decided thirty years ago. Emissions have risen ever since. There is no international action agreed to cut emissions. There is no clear view that cutting emissions to zero tomorrow will do much good, it won’t bring the Arctic ice back, the climate is already wrecked, sea levels will still keep rising, the oceans will still be acidified, etc, just because of what’s already in the pipeline.

Listen to what Tad Patzek says, re the climate being de-stabilised, in the first part, ( the peak oil stuff, etc, later is less relevant.) The Holocene has gone. It’s not coming back

Yes, there will be all sorts of proposals, I don’t doubt that, and if they look as if they’ll make a lot of money for some corporation, they’ll maybe get put into action, but all those people are idiots. The weather chaos in the N. hemisphere is because of the temp gradient between the Arctic and the sub-tropics. There is no way of adjusting that, mechanically, to tune the jetstream back to how it used to be. All the grandiose hubristic schemes for spraying seawater into the sky or covering the ocean with polystyrene balls, etc, will just make an even greater mess, with unforeseen knock on effects, which will likely be even more catastrophic.

But I agree with you. That won’t stop them being tried. But I think there will be wars, because when the Himalayan glaciers fail to supply the great Asian rivers, or when the Monsoon fails, there’s a few billion people there…
Wadhams said 4 deg C makes central Europe like N. Africa. By the time we get to that stage, there will be wars. I suppose war is a sort of geo-engineering…

Erm, I got an email asking that you be ‘permitted to view my blog’, and I clicked it, and it’s changed my name here from ulvfugl to monsangelorum, just in case anyone is confused… I am wolfbird / ulvfugl and my blog is monsangelorum, although I have not written any blog posts for a long time, I post anything interesting I find whilst surfing on the discussion area, fwiw.

Thanks for the compliment… well, I was just passing by, commenting re methane which has concerned me recently, and seeing as NBL is full of trolls at the moment, and I’ve got no patience for that today, here I am, on my way back to NTE, which was started by Brad Phillips, to try and relieve the pressure on NBL and provide a bit more space. I’ve read posts here quite often on Tom’s recommendation.

I’m possibly even doomier than Guy now. He’s still trying to get the message across to people. I’ve reached the point where even that seems like a waste of time. I mean, do it if you want to, do whatever you want to do, but I don’t think anything will really effect the course of events very much. We’re on the IPPC’s ‘very worst case’ projection, and that left out all the really nasty feedbacks, and was a gross under-estimate of what has actually happened. The Spring here was two months late. It’s picked up a little, nearer one month late now. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It’s very frightening, in terms of what it means for the ecology.

There don’t appear to be any adults in charge anywhere. The bankers and politicians are insane, the masses are ignorant. The scientists are clueless. The greens are clueless. Whose left ? We’re all going over a cliff… Too late now. It could have been different, but there’s a time lag. Humans are not good at deferred effects.
The ocean acidification on its own is probably sufficient to cause an extinction event, without all the other irreversible feedbacks we’ve started going….

Btw, I don’t think anyone should ‘give up’. So long as they are alive, people have to spend their time doing something. My preferred option would be to fight like hell to the last breath against the machine that’s killing us all. I’d love to see retribution against the people who have KNOWINGLY got us into this mess. But that’s just me.

Well yes the learning curve for the teeming masses appears to be extremely steep and infinite. So there’s no hope there. I agree that doing something is preferable to doing nothing, even when you know the effort is moot.

The weather here in the Southwest U.S. has been unusually cold, likely from the mangled Jet Stream. It’s past the middle of May and I’m still wearing a sweater.

I suppose I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that the future will simply be a ratcheting up every year of ‘dysfunctionality’. This means your chance of death at the hands of the coddled financial elite will also go up. Therefore, all the more reason to spend your time fighting the injustice of it all.

I use https://www.startpage.com/ which is supposed to conceal my ISP so that google whoever cannot track me. How effective it is I have no idea.

Yes, there is no hope of educating the masses about the technicalities, re methane, whatever, and with all the disinfo spread by Kochs, Murdoch, etc, and the lies of politicians, trust has been totally lost. Scientists don’t have much authority or respect any more amongst the masses. Who would they listen to ? It’s a madhouse, just look at the comments on youtube.

Yes, I think we’ll have an interval of fascist dystopia, of the kinds described by novelists all the way back to Zamyatin’s WE, as power tries to retain control, but ultimately this thing is beyond any human control. I think Atwood’s A Hand Maid’s Tale was fairly prescient.

Maybe there’ll be a pause in the climatic changes, or maybe an acceleration. It’s a noisy system, it bounces about. A big pandemic that killed off a billion, or a really big volcanic eruption, or something, could change the timescale. What do you make of the chemtrail stuff ? Some smart people insist geoengineering ( or whatever it is ) has been going on for years.

Personally, I’m misogynistic, not at an individual level, but en masse, I’m sick of humans, I just want habitat and species to survive as long as possible, just in case there is a small chance. For me, that’s the greatest crime imaginable, that we cause the extinction of species that have survived for tens, hundreds of millions of years, without even a thought about what we are doing. That desecration I can’t forgive.

I haven’t dove into that rabbit hole of chemtrails because on the surface it appears to be pure conspiracy theory which I avoid at all costs. So I don’t have an opinion due to lack of information.

The Mass Extinction, or Mass Extermination, is part of our own undoing. Whether you are a “biophiliac” or not, you should be concerned, but there again we go back to the mental midget majority. Collectively speaking, humans are as mentally agile as the defunct Dodo bird.

Right now I’m making one of my epic videos with an apocalyptic ending. Gail from WitsEnd wanted me to use material from a link, but that link is no longer available to the public, so I’m doing my own thing.

I have included the Sixth Great Mass Extinction Event, Die-off (human), Acidification of the Oceans, EROEI, The net energy Hubbert’s Curve, Peak Oil, Peak Phosphorus, Peak Everything etc. in the information I supplied to my local council in connection with their so-called planning…. which in reality is not planning at all for anything connected with what is happening in the real world right now, or what is likely to happen over the coming decade.

More than a decade ago I included the probability of NTE in the first book I wrote, Burn Baby Burn (though, as far as I know, the term Near Term Extinction was not being used at that time). Burn baby, burn: present-day adults are more than happy to burn the next generation -even their own progeny- on the ‘fire’ of unrestrained consumption.

Over a period of more than a decade of attempting to raise awareness of the life-threatening issues I have discovered that most people are:

ignorant
stupid
stubborn

That applies at all levels of society….. prime ministers and presidents to rubbish collectors and dish washers. That is why I called my most recent book (2011) ‘The Easy Way’: most people are going to learn the hard way because they refuse to learn the easy way. In TEW I covered pretty mush everything anyone would need to know, and included runaway positive feedbacks.

Early next month I will address my local council, knowing full well that those with the power to make a difference -we cannot stop the marching off the cliff but we can reduce the suffering- will take no notice of anything I say and will continue with their insane schemes predicated on putting the general populace INTO harm’s way.

As we have noted many times, those in power tend to be psychotic sociopaths who have fascist leanings. And the dumbed-down masses keep voting for them.

Climate chaos is starting to impact NZ but the great mass of cool water that surrounds NZ will probably ameliorate things for a while. .

Wadhams says that 4 deg C makes central Europe into desert, but maybe UK and Norway, the western fringe will be fine, because the Gulf Stream will have slowed, so will cause a cooling effect, blablabla, so only 2 deg C here.

I have no confidence in these vaguely optimistic prognostications. What’s frightening me here, isn’t temperature rise at all. It’s the Rossby wave jetstream thingee. A nice even gentle rise of two degrees, so that we could grow olives and lemons, like Portugal, would be quite attractive, in theory. But that’s not it, is it. What we get is effing chaos. No more seasons at all anymore. Hot in the middle of winter, cold in the middle of summer, extreme wet, extreme dry, all lasting for a long time, stuck, because of the slowing of the jet stream oscillation. That means the ecology collapses. it also makes gardening and farming almost impossible because nobody will know what to plan for.

And anyway, there’s 800 million people in Europe, and if half of it becomes like N. Africa, where do they go, what do they eat, not to mention the people in Africa and N. Africa already… total chaos…

Where are the adults ? George Osborne wants to grow the economy by fracking for gas ? That’s about the extent of the ‘planning’ for 60 million, and we’re almost on the brink of a civil war with blacks and whites and whatnots killing each other in the streets… well, that’s ( I hope ) an exaggeration… but before long I don’t think it will be, and in coalition with Al Qaeda trying to overthrow Assad ? so we can get oil from Iraq and Saudi and gas fro Qatar… and nobody has any idea what else to do… except to a bunch of hippy dippy dreamers who think it will all be alright if they keep smiling…

I don’t know what to say to anybody anymore.

The trolls can have NBL. I don’t have anything to say.

Every man and woman and child for themselves, into the shark-infested black water… ? Hahahaha

I grew up in England, and lived in Wales for a year -in 1973 to 1974- in Wrexham. No insult to Englishmen and Welshmen but it’s already pretty grim for most people ‘over there’. One of the most disturbing things (apart from the fact that the population has increased by about 10 million since my childhood) is the ‘death of nature’. Numerous species that were common when I was a child have been more-or-less wiped out, especially in southeast England. I read that hedgehogs have fallen from an estimated 30 million to below 1 million in approximately 30 years Newts? What are they?

Arguably the most important factor as far as Europe is concerned is whether freshwater from glaciers will swamp the Thermohaline Conveyor and plunge temperatures by several degrees in the short term before warming of the North Atlantic starts to raise temperatures.

The drought of the past summer here in NZ was the most extensive recorded. It is not unusual for regions of the North Island to experience periods of drought, but in 2013 most of the NI was in drought and so were several regions of the SI, including the west coast.

NZ is currently printing something like $300 million a week (Thank you Mrs Watanabe) to prop up dysfunctional arrangements, largely based on industrial dairying, horticulture, logging, plus building roads houses and shopping malls etc. : all the madness seen elsewhere in the western world. We have the great advantage of being one of the last places in the western world to be ‘developed’.

Right now there is blue, almost cloudless, sky, and little wind: It’s difficult for the uninformed masses to imagine anything could possibly be wrong, even if Sweden is ‘on fire’ and people in China are dropping like flies..

I’m a bit like you. I don’t know what to say most of the time.

That is where NBL and CoIC are so useful because I can copy stuff and show them (e.g. The Arctic Death Spiral).

By the way, I organised most of Guy McPherson’s speaking tour of NZ, and facilitated his keynote address In Wellington. Others organised an interview on National Radio.

None of it made a scrap of difference, as far as I can tell… well a slight exaggeration: the level of awareness probably rose from 0.2 to 0.5% around here and from 0.2 to 0.3% nationally. The maniacs still behave like maniacs )and I’m talking about politicians and community ‘leaders’.

I keep doing it because what else is there to do that has any meaning?

In a society that operates at the intellectual level of an average 12-year-old it surely seems that only utter catastrophe will bring the maniacs to heel. Yet, judging by Japan’s recent policy announcements, even catastrophe has little impact on them.

I lived near Wrexham about that time, in a caravan at Marchwiel, forget the exact year, perhaps we passed in the street 🙂 Quite rough and industrial there, much lower population and more rural where I am now, further from civilisation in the mountains.
I’d say most species have declined at least half since my childhood… insects, flowers, birds… makes me feel ill to think about it.

I have fenced off two fields which are ‘reverting’ or whatever the word is, to whatever they want to be, which are islands, surrounded by that is all heavily and constantly grazed without any break, or intensively cultivated to grow silage whatever for cattle, and I have other woodland and rough meadow that is returning to woodland, etc, none of which will make me popular amongst the farmers who will see it as a betrayal, neglect, ‘scrub’, which is a dirty word of abuse, but I have a fine scientific paper which describes a study of ‘scrub’ as one of the best possible wildlife habitats 🙂

Like if you live in a twee manicured picture village where everybody is expected to mow their lawn and have flowers in hanging baskets, if you don’t you’re ‘letting the side down’, hahaha. I get along well with my neighbours though, even though we rarely meet. I asked one farmer, about how he saw all this, and he said “it’s like the traffic on the motorway, we all have to go at the same speed whether we like it or not, so we all have to buy new equipment every so many years and upgrade, or we’ll slow everybody else down, and it’s all basically controlled by the Gvt, by what they subsidize and what they don’t”. So they are really just slaves in a chain gang.

I gave up everything, risked everything, committed everything, just like Guy, except I didn’t have as much to lose, to fight for the wildlife in every way I possibly could, I published a short manifesto about all this stuff in my mid twenties, and i was always on the brink of writing a book, when someone else would publish the book I would have written but did a better job and saved me the work 🙂 All to no avail really.

Yes, I’m certain you know exactly what it’s like. You speak to all these people and keep hearing the same things over and over again… nothing works, nothing gets through, they’ll agree with you, but nothing changes, there’s people who seem to get it, like McKibben or Porritt, and turns out they don’t, there’s organisations you think have integrity that turn out to be corrupt, just endless frustration, disillusionment and heartbreak.

Found this on RealClimate, doesn’t cover S. Pole unfortunately, but it’s useful info.

The thing to always remember is that all real decisions made in the world are made by the big international bankers, the global corporate leaders, the elite ruling families of the world……..nothing happens unless they want it to.
Doesn’t matter what scientists say. Doesn’t matter what smart, educated people want. Doesn’t matter what the billions of people in the world want. The big boys control all the money, the media, and the political leaders.
And they do not want to curtail our use of fossil fuels.
End of story.
NTE is assured.

Hey guys! Good to see two of my favorite commenters on one of my favorite sites!
I don’t know what happened over at NBL, but lately it’s like nobody is listening to anyone else, miscommunication, incivility, complete misunderstanding of the implications of what Guy has pointed out, arguing about credibility if things don’t pan out exactly as he predicts, etc.

ulvfugl – With the Arctic ice loss (not to mention Greenland, the Antarctic and several other large mountainous ice masses and glaciers disappearing quickly) comes chaos, I agree, and whether or not “uninhabitability” takes place in exactly 4.5 years, it still signals persistent drought in the breadbasket areas of the world no matter what else happens – and a LOT of “else” is going to happen in the meantime. I don’t see anyone taking into consideration the on-going earthquakes and volcanic activity that’s in uptick mode recently, the solar maximum we’re going through (with our weakened radiation belt less able to protect us from incoming CME effects), the rampant diseases (nCorv, H7N9, good ol’ H1N1, SARS, and many others multiplying by the week) for which we have no defense, the coming food shortages predicted as early as this fall in the U.S., while stupidity abounds in governments, fascism becomes policy and civil unrest explodes everywhere (I mean Sweden? fer crissake) – and people are worried about the powers that be surviving with personal mininukes. We’re all going out because there won’t be anything left! Why is that so hard to comprehend? One cannot live without the support system that sustains life. Whether you prepped with a bunker full of food and ammunition matters not one bit. The freaking air will be filled with toxic gases like methane, ozone, and hydrogen sulfide, so what are you gonna breathe? There will be no life in the oceans or on land eventually, so what are you gonna eat? They just don’t want to face it and keep relying on ‘hopium’ and wishful thinking or doubt to save them, as if what WE THINK is going to change the reality of the collapse in any way at all. I guess it all goes to the faux separation of man and nature that’s been a by-product of the influence of science on the masses.

Kevin – i’m going through a similar dissociation in my state of PA, where the governor has taken it upon himself to basically give away the mineral and gas rights to the fracking industry for personal gain (campaign contributions), while the industry itself pumps out misinformation on a massive scale (I mean tv ads glorifying how RICH people can become by signing over the rights to the gas under their land, never mind that you can’t drink your well water sell your home or become fatally ill due to being downwind of their operation after they arrive and start pumping and polluting) and we (minority of) concerned citizens are relegated to trying to influence our state reps (who are largely bought by the same industry) to put a moratorium on them until they can do it more safely (which they can’t). It’s so maddening – the apathy of the public, the glacial pace of “change” for the better (while their disaster continues every day).

In short, nobody wants to change while they have an advantageous position (the misnamed “civilized” part) and can ignore the starving “3rd world.” Once our OWN starvation and struggle ramps up to the point at which it can’t be ignored, we’ll follow the same trajectory as the rest of the world currently in upheaval, with rioting, looting, mayhem and death mixed in with martial law (and resistance to that).

Last two posts on NBL by Daniel and Jeff Strahl made sense to me, and the comments were mostly okay too, I read Gary’s essay before Guy published it, thought it was fine writing but he hadn’t really got what Daniel had said, and now the comments are mostly ridiculous dumbed down nonsense, imo, I can’t be bothered to get involved, I’ll only get into another feud, there’s only a handful of people there whose views I read with serious interest and respect. Nevermind.

Back where I was before, on DM, Kingsnorth is still doing his eloquent handwringing.

That’s never going to fix anything either. I feel the same pain and anger. But it just becomes self-indulgent plucking heart strings. People could burn barns and destroy farm machinery, like the Luddites, I suppose, take serious practical action, but there are so few, compared with the ignorant masses, and they’d quickly be arrested and imprisoned and branded by the media as terrorists, I doubt it would accomplish anything worth the sacrifice and effort, although if I was 40 years younger, given NTE, I might think it worth it just for the feel good factor.

Thanks for that website, Dark Mountain blog. Like it says in the blog FAQ, I also feel that the world of art and literature is ignoring the most important issues of all time…..as it says:

“The Project grew out of a feeling that contemporary art and literature were failing to respond honestly or adequately to the scale of our entwined ecological, economic and social crises. We believe that writing and art have a crucial role to play in coming to terms with this reality, and in questioning its foundations.”

Ecocide is what we are dealing with. How can most of the world ignore or dismiss it? I can’t. Every day I struggle emotionally in dealing with it. It follows me everywhere I go. It is just beneath every thought I have, every action I take, every bit of conversation I have, from morning to night. I dream about it.

Somehow I am handling it. Anger, deep sadness, sometimes depression edge into my daily moments when something inside of me forces me to again acknowledge the reality that others seem to be able to completely ignore. I think that little by little I am learning strategies to be able to live my life in different levels, sometimes in full acknowledgement of the hopelessness of our situation and future, and sometimes fully in denial, at least on the surface, as I go to work, deal with my kids, age 19 and 24, and my wife, and live and momentarily think like others, fully caught up in our busy world. I never felt I was especially strong emotionally, feeling that too much stress would push me over that line into what is called being crazy, but somehow I have drug up some inner strength and more than ever want to face this beast honestly and head on.

As I have really no people in the flesh around here that have the slightest understanding of where my head is, it is very important to me to be able to read Mike’s blog here, NBL, Derrick Jenson, and a very few other venues and writers.

Paul G., I’m with you. We draw strength from others who are similarly horrified. (I’m not wallowing when I follow such writers; add Keith Farnish at, e.g., The Earth blog [http://originalearthblog.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/if-the-economy-doesnt-shrink-were-finished/]. I’m encouraged. A small force can move a mighty load with the right lever & fulcrum, and it was Ralph Nader, among others, who suggested 1 percent might succeed in turning the runaway monster.)

We can hardly talk about this daily with anyone around us, knowing we risk being blamed for their growing feeling of pointlessness in their preoccupations & the accusation that our own mundane activities violate our own convictions.

I’m prepared to agree with the Druid that positive actions for a long-haul goal will turn out to be valuable use of limited time. I maintain, though, that we have not evolved to face a subtle, gradual, long-term disaster such as we’ve brought to the planet & is now unfolding. We must transcend our own genetic heritage & manage our own evolution into creatures that CAN take such a long view, appreciate such a quiet threat, & respond in a way that preserves not just a ragged remnant of humanity but at least pockets of thriving Earth life. No thriving biosphere, no viable human population; that’s pretty simple. Not reduce, reuse, recycle but restore, replenish, & revive must become watchwords when it comes to the protection of living systems.

Nothing wrong with commiserating, ‘weeping together’, and I’m a fan of Keith Farnish, but as for the rest, I suggest you’re kidding yourself, what has Nader ever achieved ? Everything has got worse, nothing has got better.

I find all this hopey-changey talk incredibly irritating. I’ve been trying to change the world for 40 years. Having totally unrealistic fantasies really doesn’t help at all.

You must be kidding. Most people are going to die, because civilisation is going to crash. A few may survive, post civilisation, for a while, although one can only guess where and how. And you think you will be granted the luxury to do that, ‘transcending’, whatever it means ?

Archdruid doesn’t get it. He thinks this is going to be a re-play of, say, collapse of Imperial Rome. It’s nothing like that at all. 4 deg. C. Massive die off. Hundreds of nuclear power plants going critical because they are not maintained. No more stable climate. Ever. That sort of thing.

The green utopia model simply doesn’t apply.

Almost certainly. Fascist dystopia, Mad Max, The Road, then a very long silence.

Hahaha, well, if I’m in earshot, you’re liable to get your head slapped. Look, I don’t mean to be unkind to you personally. The internet is awash with far worse than anything you said, but if we are going to discuss these topics, then please, let’s get free from illusions.

Re the lever and the fulcrum. Nobody knows where the lever is or where to place it do they ?

I’m willing to accept, in theory, that the course of history can, in principle, be changed. A woman set out to shoot Lenin, but she forgot to take her glasses, so her vision was blurred and she missed. If she had taken her time, perhaps been more careful in her planning, so she remembered her spectacles, then she might have killed him successfully, and thus the whole of the twentieth century might have been different.

If someone could explain to me, where to insert the magic lever, to change the future, then I’m all ears.

I don’t want to save civilisation, or the human species, I want to save the biosphere.

As far as I can tell, it is already too late to do that. Not by a lot. 20 or 30 years, that’s all.

If someone can explain where my thinking is wrong, great. It’s only a year since I finally concluded that it was all over.

This is a most terrible thing to come to terms with. I’m sorry to be so harsh with everyone. I don’t know how else to do it.

I’ve listened to all to all the hopey-changey stuff for 15 years on the internet. I preached it myself for years. Now it makes me feel rather sick. Tell it to children, if you must, if you think white lies are justifiable. I’m an adult. I tell the truth I want the truth, I don’t tolerate lies.

You know, your ideas about some sort of idealised human condition in the future that we can aspire to… it’s only natural to want something better than to face pure horror, I understand that.

But look, just the acidification of the oceans is very likely sufficient to cause a mass extinction event, on it’s own, quite independently from climate change.

Has anybody got any idea how to extract carbonic acid/CO2 from the oceans ? When human soceities are in a state of chaos and collapse ? How many people even know or care that it is a problem, other than a handful of marine biologists ?

If we truly want to “get free from illusions,” we need to learn to disregard all the batshit scenarios in our heads. ALL of them. Because they are all delusions, not to mention illusions.

This is why I do not blog & only rarely comment: ninety percent of the energy goes to heated clarifications. Mr. Uly, I will read your remarks closely when I cool down. I have an overseas holiday phone call to make, a base to touch. (One of the few people with whom I CAN be my doomer self.)

“If someone can explain where my thinking is wrong, great. It’s only a year since I finally concluded that it was all over.”
I’d like to, but I can’t. I completely,agree.
I’m about a year into the hopeless era.
I don’t think I have sacrificed so much as you. I’ve been minimally active about change, but my heart was in it for years. Did a few things and went out on a limb here and there.
But I’m with you that we are past the point where collapse could be avoided, and I also mean the collapse of the biosphere.

I think if most of the world right now felt strongly that we are truly and quickly headed toward disaster, and they wanted to sacrifice their way of life for the biosphere, then maybe we would have a chance. But we all know that there are very few people thinking like us. And the international corporate elite ruling families would never allow the people to think like us. They own the media. How would the average human on earth ever get a real sense of the danger we are in when Exxon and GE and Monanto, and Goldman Sachs don’t want them thinking like that?

A group I’m part of here in NC spent half a year trying to get people interested in a march and protest about global warming. We did everything right. We wanted thousands. We got a couple hundred at best, mostly groups already interested and part of the movement. And that is out of several million residents.
The next day, in the same area, thousands showed up for a support jog for the SPCA. I have nothing against the SPCA, and I love my dogs, but, really, cannot people see that our future as humans AND dogs is at stake?

The media could turn it all around in weeks if they wanted to. Remember how, in just weeks, the media had Americans and Brits, chafing at the bit to go and invade Iraq and take out Saddam? With no facts and just nonsense they had most of us scared out of our wits. Ok, not me. But almost everyone here. Think what they could do with REAL facts. And REAL impending horror. But this is not to be. The Morgans and Rockefellers and Rothschilds and Kissingers and Bushes, Jamie Dimonds and BP and Peabody Coal, and the Koch’s and Cargill and Coca Colas and Bill Gates and the rest are adamant: they will not tolerate a world with the teeming masses demanding revolutionary change to our economic system while there is still gobs and gobs of money to be made.

At best we are decades away from any real awakening by the people of the world to the reality we here are seeing so clearly. It would take years and political revolution just to get the media out of the hands of those who are the enemy of all of the living things on earth. And how do you even start that revolution when almost everyone gets their information and ideas from that same media system we want to bring down.

No, there is no hope. None. We are in a speeding train toward a cliff and there is no one at the controls.

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OWS knows who really pulls the strings

"...the megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. Indeed, Occupy's best move, as conservative blogger/financier Gregory Djerejian noted at TheAtlantic.com, was "directing their ire squarely toward the real elites of the country, rather than their bought-and-paid marionettes sitting in Washington."

Preserving the Status Quo

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